Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

But Boroshinsky had not heard the final sentence: he was already scribbling notes on his datapad.

Dennehy smiled, then returned his face to impassive neutrality. “We trust this will provide appropriate new directions for the Research Project. Dr. Navarre, you are specifically instructed to keep your group focused on establishing the cognitive, behavioral, and social objectives necessary to facilitate positive, long-term communication with your subjects. That is not your primary concern: it is your only concern. Is that clear?”

“Very much so, sir. However, I must report that I consider only two of my subjects-the surviving female and the youngest cub-to show any probability of willing communication with us. Unfortunately, the female’s mental capacity has been conclusively demonstrated to be very low; she will probably never become more capable than a human child of three years of age. Less, when it comes to language.”

“We understand. So, aside from the kit named Hap, the other kzinti will provide you with bases of both biological and behavioral comparison. In time, we may also need to use them to generate cell lines-samples for the synthesis of kzin scents, hormones-that might be required by either your group, or the biology group. Before we adjourn, is there anything else?”

Pyragy made a huffing noise.

“Yes, Director?”

“Admiral, Executive, in light of these proceedings, I am uncertain regarding my own role in this project.”

“What do you mean, Director?”

“Is it not obvious, Executive? You have apparently made me redundant. My group leaders disagreed with my orders and policies and you have intervened on their behalf, overturning all my directives in a public forum. You could have chosen to do so in a more private venue with me, but you did not. So I must wonder: am I still in charge of this project, or have I been reduced to a mere figurehead?”

Selena had to hand it to Pyragy: he might be authoritarian, unctuous, and ingenuine, but the bastard had guts.

The two senior officials exchanged long looks before the executive turned dead eyes upon the Pyragy. “You ask a reasonable question, Director. Here is the response: it depends.”

“Depends upon what?”

“It depends upon your ability to follow the ARM’s mandate for this project at least as well as your group leaders do. And to date, that has not been the case. So let us put it this way, Director: your position on the project is entirely up to you. Does that answer your question?”

The look on Pyragy’s face said that it did and that he wasn’t at all pleased with it.

While he was still engaged in his angry staring match with the executive and the admiral, Boroshinsky looked over at Selena slyly, and actually winked. She smiled, nodded faintly in return, and resisted the urge to get up and dance on her desk.

At last: now we can get some real work done.

2399 BCE: Subject age-three years

“This is a funny language, but I like it.” Hap practiced the long, linked vowel strings of another of the Heroes’ Tongue’s compound verbs: in this case, eaooiiasou , or, “to seek-while-leaping.” He looked up at Dieter, blinking in the sun, and made the sound again, almost as if he were singing it: “ Eaooiiasou! ”

Dieter smiled back, keeping his lips closed as he did so, as Selena had taught him. If Hap learned the open-mouthed smile of humans, he’d be unintentionally sending a challenge every time he met a kzin he liked or found amusing. “He’s learning very quickly. And very well.”

Selena nodded, mindfully keeping an extra few inches between herself and Dieter as she drew him away from Hap. No reason to give her group any more reason to gossip than they already had. “Yes. He’s very clever. I just wish we had a better way to teach him the Heroes’ Tongue.”

“He seems to be doing well enough with what you’ve got.” Dieter listened as the next interactive learning program began, and the cub began getting corrective oral pulses from the biosensor implants when his pronunciation of unfamiliar phonemes veered off.

“Well, the problem is with what we’ve got of their language: not much, and not the right kind of lexicon.”

“What do you mean?”

“All we know about kzin speech is the comm traffic we’ve picked up when they invade, almost all of which is heavily encrypted and non-verbal. We got a bit more from debriefing you Wunderlanders who came in on the slow boats from Centauri. But most of what we have was harvested from the few military wrecks that were intact enough to do us any good. Like that Raker-class small-boat you modified for snatching the kits.”

“So what’s the problem with the information from the wrecks? Were their computers corrupted?”

“No, we got very clean data. But it was the wrong data. Normal speech and military comm traffic may overlap, but the latter is really just a word-poor, albeit highly specialized, dialect of the former. We don’t have very much in the way of domestic vocabulary, or terms that describe states of being, or emotional or philosophical concepts. And we won’t have any access to informal idiom until we get Dr. Yang’s first response. If she’s still there.”

Dieter nodded. “I see. And the kzinti don’t use voice recognition software?”

“Very little. In place of voice recognition software, they depend upon ocular tracking. And since their physical reflexes are much faster than ours, the differential between their ‘look-and-blink’ systems and our voice command programs is pretty low.”

With the next lesson over, Hap flopped backward, sprawling in a manner that somehow mixed the boneless repose of early adolescence with “limp as a kitten.” Then his head swiveled slightly, his nose flaring after a peripherally detected scent. His ears shot out to full extension, his shoulders tensed.

“What’s that?” asked Dieter.

“That,” Selena explained, feeling a bit of inexplicable melancholy as she did, “is Hap detecting the scent of other kzinti.”

“Females?”

“Males. We can’t start with females. Every bit of data we have suggests that once the male cubs are separated from the mothers, they are not allowed further contact. We suspect that the scent of females could-um, confuse them.”

“How long have you been piping in the scent?”

“Just today. And just a few whiffs. Nothing very-”

Hap rose slowly, his head turning, searching. Then he looked at the teaching module and turned his back on it. This left him facing Selena directly. “Where are the others?”

Damn it, he distinguished it that quickly. At one part per million, he-

“Where are they?” Hap’s tone, while not quite imperious, was crisp and no-nonsense. “Where are the others like me?”

Selena kneeled down: he had grown so large that she hardly needed to anymore. “They are in other paddocks, in other spaces.”

“Why? Why are we not kept together? Why have I not met them?”

“Well, that’s a long story-”

Hap promptly sat down; he looked up at her. “Tell me. Please.” He looked at Dieter. “When you come and then go-sometimes for weeks-I start wondering ‘why do I have to stay here? Why can’t I go with Dieter?’ But I know I’ll get the same answer as when I ask to go somewhere else: not yet. Always ‘not yet.’ It doesn’t make sense. All of you-without hair-you go other places. Places beyond the walls, beyond the fence. But I don’t. I stay here. It’s a big space, but I can’t go anywhere else. You don’t let me.” He looked back at Selena. “Why?”

Selena looked at Dieter and then took a deep breath. Before she could start speaking, Hap leaned forward. “Before you start telling me, I need to know something.”